Yes, you've read correctly, TPG is going unlimited! A representative of TPG who goes by the name 'Dan.S' has posted the following on Whirlpool:

TPG is pleased to announce an exciting up and coming change to our ADSL2+ product range. For this first time we will offer an Unlimited Broadband product for only $75 a month that has:

· No Shaping Speeds.
· No Time Limits or Time Restrictions.
· ADSL2+ technology.

What makes this even more exciting is that for an extra $1 our Home Phone Line Rental can be purchased as an optional add on at the time of purchase. A $10 Minimum call charge for TPG Home Phone applies. This product will be available at Limited Exchange Coverage areas only. More details to be provided at the time of product release.

Regards,
TPG Internet

This is a clear response to AAPT's unlimited offering, which costs $100 per month, but includes line rental and $50 of monthly music downloads.

Perhaps the greatest aspect out of all this is the ability to stream on-demand media without worrying about quotas. The day where we can finally dump optical discs for online entertainment services may well be upon us!

If you haven't done so already, here's your last chance to tell the Australian government that we need an R18+ rating for games! You can get the appropriate document here.

Don't fret though, it takes 10 minutes to fill out, and the comment section is optional (it's only 250 words anyway). When you're done, it's as simple as e-mailing the document to the provided e-mail address. Get to it!

It's the age old argument. What platform is most secure, Windows, MacOS or Linux? Apple wants you to believe that their OS, MacOSX, is the best option, which is evident by their ad campaigns featuring two men depicting a 'PC' and a 'Mac' respectively. Perhaps the most relevant skit can be found here. Linux, on the other hand, is known to take security very seriously. Some would say too seriously, with constant nagging not unlike the infamous Vista UAC. Of course, it's arguable that security is a lot more important than avoiding the incessant tending to security dialogues. Then there's Windows. It has a reputation for being riddled with viruses, spyware, or just malware in general. This mentality may have started in 1986, five years after the first virus was deployed on the Apple II. Since Microsoft's software was so popular, it became the obvious target for future attacks.

Think to how operating systems are labelled in terms of common stereotypes. You've got Linux, the one that only the most hardened of 'nerds' can master, where problems can be fixed easily - if you know how the whole OS works from top to bottom - and it's locked down to nasties. MacOS, the virus free virgin OS where everything is simple and pure, and everything is creative and fun. Then there's Windows, the master of spreadsheets, and the one that's compatible with most software/hardware; but it's always chucking a sickie. Fortunately, stereotypes aren't my thing, so I find these attitudes quite amusing. Unfortunately, it only takes a few minutes of browsing an active forum or comment section of a news site to hear this nonsense spout as gospel. To the credit of online communities, most people have wised up; perhaps due to the introduction of 'rank' based comments and online reputation.

Your everyday computer user is often influenced by these lingering stereotypes. Not only have they been around for several years, but they require little explanation. To teach people the truth, or at least, put these claims into perspective, would require a fair amount of technical explanation; most of which people just don't care about. Herein lies a problem, one that boggles the minds of those competent enough to understand. Security is no longer a question of OS platform, but the product of user awareness. You see, a criminal can just as easily obtain your bank account details whether you're on a PC, Mac or multi-million dollar mainframe running a Linux distro. The platform that's going to cause you trouble isn't the OS - it's the Internet.

Viruses and spyware are old-hat. Sure, they're not extinct, but they're far from the preferred method of obtaining personal details. The Internet allows criminals to obtain your personal information the old fashioned way, by scamming you through trickery. I'm sure many of you have had friends initiate a chat session with something along the lines of "Hey, I found this funny picture of you: *insert link here*". Looks innocent enough to most people, so you click it. At this stage you're met with a site similar to the sign-in page of your awesome-newfangled-social-networking account. An experienced user would probably notice that the link is odd, or that asking for details is suspicious. The everyday user would probably think "Urghh, it always asks me to login", and would then proceed to enter their details. Naturally, this would leave the owner of the fake site with access to all your details associated with said account. This phenomenon is called 'phishing'. It's not a new occurrence, but it's definitely the hardest to combat. Whilst viruses can be tracked via software, phishing requires the user to employ common sense. Your 'secure' OS can't do a thing about it.

Whilst many phishing sites use your details to spam your friends with advertisements, others do a lot more damage. Many people share private data on sites such as Facebook, to the extent where obtaining that data can lead to identify theft. In addition, phishing attempts for your bank details is a common occurrence. For example, there's been official-looking e-mails sent out requesting updated bank details; banks will never e-mail you asking for sensitive data.

So what can users do to protect themselves? The obvious thing is to be vigilant when using the Internet. If something looks suspicious, don't use it. Common aspects to look out for are odd or misspelt URLs, inaccurate page layout, improper English, or a missing/invalid security certificate (if applicable). You can obtain software to help detect phishing sites, but these are not foolproof, so don't rely on them as your sole line of defence. Modern browsers may have inbuilt tools which will warn you if they detect a known phishing site.

The bottom line is, you can't choose an OS based on the assumption that one is infallible. In a day and age where the Internet is a larger platform than all the major OSs combined, it only makes sense for nasties to shift their focus online instead of a smaller section of the market. Each OS has their share of nasties, it's up to the user to implement the appropriate safeguards to avoid them. This includes installing software from trusted sources, avoiding illegal software, and steering clear of suspect sites. In addition, an OS can only block what you let it, so the next time you're asked "do you want to allow xyz to have access to your system", think about what's being installed, and whether you initiated it. That's not to say that each OS is equally vulnerable. Some OSs are better at dealing with malware than others. That being said, the reality is that they all have a consistent exploit - the end user.

Online comics are responsible for more than just the degradation of productivity in work environments. Many life lessons can be learnt from comics, if you manage to wade through the quirky facades and look deep into the core message. But who does that! We want fun, and comics provide just that - a chance for people to sit back, relax, and have a little giggle at all the silliness the Internet offers.







http://buttersafe.com/
Buttersafe plays on undeniable quirkiness to create humour out of otherwise mediocre situations. You'll often find yourself staring at the screen thinking "well... that was random!" Proceeding the comic is the authors comment, which clarifies (read: unclarifies - see, now I've gone and made up words!) what you've just witnessed. The result is a potent mix of wit, confusion, and awesome; it's the genius that is Buttersafe.

http://cowbirdsinlove.com/
Cowbirds in Love shares a similar humour style to Buttersafe. The main difference is the sketch-esque art style which focuses on character and text placement for effect. Unlike Buttersafe which is updated Tuesdays and Thursdays, Cowbirds in Love is updated without a schedule. Read them together and you've got double the fun!

http://www.explosm.net/
Explosm's 'Cyanide and Happiness' is a joint effort by Dave, Kris, Rob, and Matt. Each day a comic is created by one of these talented men (or if you're lucky, a Flash video sketch). The type of humour differs between the artists, and you'll soon come to recognise who's who by their artistic style. It's an excellent site for those who enjoy nonsensism as a form of entertainment.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a collection of hypothetical situations which have been intertwined with nonsensical commentary, often accompanied by a short quip. Zach Weiner does an excellent job providing a unique and amusing slant to otherwise unremarkable events. Check it out!

http://theoatmeal.com/
The Oatmeal is a series of comics which focus on providing interesting facts with stark humour. The art style is excellent, which is more than likely attributed to the fact that the author is a web designer. If you're ever up for a bit of fun whilst learning something new, there isn't a better place to do so!

http://xkcd.com/
XKCD is the comic for math, science, and computer geeks. It's an excellent mix of the aforementioned areas of study with a few dashes of awesome and win. And it's funny, too! Don't forget to hover your mouse over the comic when you've finished reading, it reveals a string of text which adds to the experience.

So, what are your favorite online comics? Tell us in the comments section below!

It's official, Microsoft have released their new mobile OS. It's not Windows Mobile any more, in name nor functionality - it's literally a new OS experience. Playing on their lucky 7 history (read: Windows 7), Microsoft has taken the plunge to deliver a fancy new way to cater to user wants and needs. I've scoured the Internet for information on this new competitor, and have collated the main points of interest.

• Xbox Live integration
• Zune-esque UI (Metro)
• Social networking centric
• Fixed hardware specifications between mobile partners. This includes the processing hardware, high resolution (WVGA) capacitive touchscreen, and three dedicated buttons 'back', 'start' and 'search'.
• Four-point multitouch
• 'Hub' based navigation. These include 'Games', 'Office', 'Music + Video', 'Pictures', 'People', 'Marketplace' and 'Applications'.
• Consistent UI between partners. No more custom UI on top of the existing Windows OS.
• Large range of carriers including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone
• Several hardware partners - Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm
• Possibly no more multitasking. Background applications will 'pause'.
• Sync over Wi-Fi

It's become clear that Microsoft are taking this market very seriously, and have laid down the lines for what is expected of their partners. It begs the question, has Microsoft restricted this platform similar to the iPhone? Let's hope it's a good mix between the openness of Android, and the consistent quality of the iPhone.

If you haven't already heard, there was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Australian government servers recently. The intent was to bring attention to the message "no one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason." The culprits go by the name 'Anonymous', and appear to have a strong opinion against Senator Conroy's decision to censor Australian Internet. It's fair to assume that these attacks were to prove how powerful this group is, and that messing with their rights to free speech and access on the Internet will not be taken lightly. A protest, of sorts. But was this attack a demonstration against an Internet clean feed, or another chip on the anti-censorship sholder?

It's no secret that Senator Conroy is oblivious to the impact his proposed ISP level Internet filter will have on Australians. It's a product designed to block websites in accordance to a secret blacklist, the performance hit is significant, and the technology can be easily bypassed via readily available means. Essentially, it's useless. It'll cost tax payers millions of dollars, and protect no one. It will, however, be quite successful in terms of an unavoidable performance hit. For a country which is behind in terms of Internet speed and quota, that's just unacceptable.

The action Anonymous has taken against the government's servers is nothing short of malicious. Similar to how protesters deliberately cause nuisance to draw attention to their cause, Anonymous has blocked access to certain government websites via a swamp of server requests. In addition to this, they took the opportunity to send recently restricted porn to government offices, particularly the Communications department.

Concerns have been raised over the appropriateness of such an attack. Conservative politicians thrive on taking otherwise clear-cut situations, and adding irrelevant or incorrect analysis to push their agenda. This is quite clear by how they promoted their Enex ISP filter test results as successful. Of course, their idea of a working ISP filter had the following conditions:

• Performance impact is considered negligible if it is less than +/‐10 percent;
• Performance impact is considered minimal if between 10 and 20 percent;
• Performance impact is considered noticeable if more than +/‐20 percent.

If it's only "noticeable" once you've lost 20% "performance", then there's a problem. A serious problem. Sadly, the report was riddled with such silly assumptions and uninspiring data. This brings us back to the point that politicians will happily dictate what we "want" to hear, provided they're able to push their agenda. In this case, they sugar coated the impact of the filter on Internet speed; and that's before they ran the tests! So when you have a vigilante group attacking their servers, you can only imagine the spin they'll produce to paint the informed userbase as "hackers". To the general public, this sounds like a matter of 'hackers' vs 'child safety', rather than 'informed citizens' vs 'dodgy filter'.

Apart from the blatant opportunity for Conroy and his minions to cast naysayers as 'the bad guys', the message that Anonymous attached to their cause is also misrepresentative of what people are fighting for. "The Australian government will learn that one does not mess with our porn." Sorry, but that's not the message you want to be putting out there. Religious citizens vote too; the last thing you want to do is tarnish the cause with your own agenda. Although it's arguable that a large fraction of the community share the same feelings, it's of my opinion that focusing on the censorship aspect is of much more importance, and encompasses the blocking of porn anyway.

It quickly became clear that many anti-filter groups were also disgusted at the actions of Anonymous. Comments on articles such as the one at AtomicMPC showed a general objection to their attacks. The fact that no mainstream activist organisations such as No Clean Feed have approved or acknowledged the attacks shows how little respect these people have attained. No one is willing to tarnish their reputation as a fair opposition to the filter. The Australian Sex Party was quick to deny responsibity or association with Anonymous.

As much as it pains people to think that we could be censored similar to the likes of China, it's also irresponsible to launch attacks against the opposition. One can only imagine the thoughts running through peoples minds as they read the news in their daily paper.

What do you think? Were Anonymous' actions justified? Reply in the comments section below!

The Internet is an insanely massive collection of servers and nodes, all of which serve a part of our rich online experience. At first it was a purely educational technology on a very slow connection; capable of text-only transmission. Since its mainstream acceptance in the 90s, there's been a massive drive to create a intuitive user experience. People have moved on from creating animated GIF filled pages about their favourite pets, and the horrible ad supported 'free' hosting services which allowed anyone to actively contribute to the worlds ASCII art collection. Not to mention the abundance of 'under construction' declarations - there's irony in that, I'm sure of it.

What was eventually formed is a generation of new sites which offer clean and dynamic infrastructures to create, share and discuss almost anything. Think content management systems (CMS) such as Wordpress, media sharing services including YouTube and Photobucket, and perhaps most importantly, social networking sites. Facebook is one of these social networking sites, and quite possibly the most popular, with an estimated value of 10 billion US dollars and 100 million users worldwide. With a major rise in social networking, should we be concerned with security? Who has access to the information we're submitting to Facebook? Is this information secure?

Nothing on the Internet is private. It's a rule that several users tend to forget on a regular basis. Once information has been placed on a host accessable to the public, it's going to be very hard to remove every copy, particularly when it comes to controversial content. Social networking is no different. In some respects, it's worse. Users are easily lured into a false sense of security, and are often led to provide personal details to 3rd parties without realising.

First and foremost, there's the wealthy list of Facebook security options to run through. I think it's safe to say that many people outright ignore these settings, and it can get hard to keep up when they're constantly being amended - and in some cases - reset. It's arguable that that example was pure user ignorance, sure. However, it's unacceptable for security settings to be altered via an impromptu security notification, especially when it's to such a vulnerable state. Many people were caught out by this, and there's no reason why this couldn't happen again. It's critical that you keep your eyes peeled for tricks such as these.

Take the time to look at the security preferences that Facebook provides. It's as simple as navigating to 'Account' > 'Privacy Settings'. If you're like me, you'd lock everything down as tightly as possible. As constricted as that sounds, it's far from fool proof.

The problem with security and Facebook (apart from being on the Internet) is the fact that all your information is freely available to friends. Makes sense right? Afterall, that's the point of Facebook; to share information with people of your choosing. Unfortunately, this is also the single greatest flaw. Your friends can distribute your details any way they like. Assuming your friends are nice trustworthy people, there's several ways for your information to leak via their access. The most obvious is their account getting compromised, which can be caused by leaving a logged in PC unattended, or through successful phishing attempts. Perhaps a little more tricky is the use of 3rd party Facebook apps.

When a friend allows a quiz, game or other application to access information on their account, they may be inadvertently giving the developer access to your data. Although you can restrict how much information friends can share about you, there's no reason why your wall posts and comments cannot be read, in addition to "name, Profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list and pages".

Facebook, among other companies, need income to remain afloat. The free service is funded by ad revenue and virtual gifts, in addition to 3rd party investments. There's no reason why Facebook couldn't start selling information to advertisers in order to create targeted ads. Will this happen, is it already happening? Possibaly. The solution is simple. Don't put anything on the Internet that you don't want the world seeing. Think deleting your nasty photos will solve the issue? Not quite. You never know where your data will end up.

Not many people realise the degree of degradation music quality has experienced over the years. It has got to the point where the old vinyl records of yesteryear, the same ones that were popular some 100 years ago, provide higher quality dynamic range and clarity than today's CD audio. Remasters of old classics are sounding worse than the originals, and new music is sub-standard from the get go. It begs the question; surely technology has improved since vinyl?

In fact, it's improved immensely. So why has quality gone backwards of late? It's because of a shift in priorities in the mainstream market. Consumers have been conditioned to enjoy highly compressed low quality audio, to the extent where the original sound is significantly different from the original. With the advent of portable digital media players, the lossy audio format knows as MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) has become a widespread hit. It can convert a typical CD quality lossless song (say, 30MB) into a handy 3MB file size at 128kbps, or 9MB at 320kbps (the highest bitrate that MP3 facilitates). That's ten times smaller. 30MB might not sound like a lot of data in this day and age, but when people have music collections well into the thousands, it all adds up; and therein lies the problem. People don't listen to thousand of songs on their music player, it's a matter of convenience. Why transfer songs as you need them when you can have your whole library with you wherever you are?

Flash storage in today's compact Portable Media Players (PMPs) is still quite limited compared to the vast amount of music available to us. 32GB is the upper limit of these players, and they're not exactly cheap. You can fit over one thousand lossless songs on a 32GB storage device. Sounds feasible, doesn't it? Unfortunately, MP3 is still the prominent way of distributing music. It almost sounds like inserting cassette tapes into a blu-ray player! Why would someone use such a low quality format on these awesome new players?

Think back to the first flash MP3 players. About six or so years ago I had a Creative player with a whopping 32MB of storage, with the ability to insert an SD card, up to 512MB if I remember correctly. Now, 32MB is tiny by anyone's standard. Using the 3MB MP3 figure above, that's a measly 10 songs. It was important to have highly compressed music, lossless was not feasible. The trade-off was between quality and file size, for the ultimate convince factor. Why carry a bulky CD or Cassette player if you can have a compact solid state device?

With the advent of these small capacity MP3 devices came the distribution of music digitally. P2P was (and still is) a huge deal. Broadband had measly quotas, high costs, and limited bandwidth - assuming you were lucky enough to obtain it! Many people were still stuck on 56k dial-up connections. As with cassettes and CDs, piracy was not uncommon. With the Internet and P2P came sharing of copyrighted music, however this music had to be compressed considerably to facilitate those on low speed connections. The age of convenience was born. Any music could be obtained freely - on demand - and placed onto a portable compact device. However, this seemingly perfect concoction had a downside - music quality. 128kbps MP3 is by no means high quality. On good audio equipment, there's a distinct difference between it and lossless. For people with mediocre headphones, you probably can't tell the difference. To make the point easier to understand, here's an example of the compression artifacts introduced when lossy encoders are used:

I tried this with my FLAC copy of '1,000,000', a track by Nine Inch Nails. Here's the MP3 compression artifacts at 128kbps, and at 320kbps. Audacity and LAME were used to encode the MP3 files for this test. You can get the original track for free at NiN's website.

Despite the reduced quality, majority of people were happy at this stage. All the boxes had been checked, and the future of miniature digital players was underway. Audiophiles sourced lossless versions of their music to match their expensive high fidelity gear, so MP3 compression was not a concern. All was not perfect, though. You can choose a lossless music source, but you can't choose the master copy; and the music industry was starting to do some nasty things to their masters.

The Loudness War

There's a highly sought after quality in music called dynamic range. Dynamic range describes the ratio between the loudest undistorted signal, and the root mean square amplitude. In laymans terms, dynamic range represents the difference between the 'loudest' and 'softest' sound signals. If you've ever seen an audio waveform, you would have noticed that the higher the wave peaks are (i.e. the amplitude), the louder the signal is, relative to the waveform as a whole. A higher dynamic range means the difference between these loud and soft sound signals is greater, thus allowing a crisper reproduction of sound. When the dynamic range is limited, soft sounds come across louder, and loud sounds start to lose their punch. The process of limiting dynamic range is known as dynamic range compression (DRC). Think of it as forcing all the loud and soft sound signals into a smaller range of volume. The higher this compression is, the harder it is to differentiate between these loud and soft sound signals, because they approach the same volume. Exccessive use of this compression technique (with amplification) can cause clipping, which loses valuable audio data, and distorts the sound significantly.

Top: Sarah Blasko's song 'Bird on a Wire' with 10:1 dynamic range compression applied.
Bottom: The original waveform.

The same waveforms again, in detail.

When you're listening to music, chances are you'll want some insturments to have a strong kick, such as the beat of the drums, and other to remain soft and mellow. DRC kills this.

The record industry decided that the Compact Disc (CD) method of audio distribution would be a great opportunity to take advantage of dynamic compression. (As a side note, dispite the term 'compression', there's no change in file size when it is applied, unlike MP3 compression.) It might sound odd (no pun intended) that someone would want to apply DRC if there was no advantage to doing so. It just so happens that the definition of 'advantage' depends on what side of the story you're on. While the consumer may prefer a higher quality audio track, the industry thinks otherwise. Apparently people prefer their music made artificially louder. To demonstrate this, I've obtained a video which describes how sound engineers 'enhance' audio:

When a publisher has their music aired on the radio, they want it to stand out. Have you ever noticed how loud TV ads seem to be in comparison to the movie or show you were watching? That's DRC in action. They want to grab your attention - music is no different.

There's many examples of how this can negatively affect sound. Here's an example of DRC on Nirvana's hit 'Smells like Teen Spirit':

A great (and somewhat laughable) example of how bad this phenomenon has become can be seen by comparing Metallica's CD album 'Death Magnetic' to the Guitar Hero version. From what I can gather, Guitar Hero requires a decent amount of dynamic range in order for the music to function well with the game's audio analysis algorithms. This video compares the CD and Guitar Hero versions:

That's quite a bit of difference.

Why people don't care

Audio is often neglected by the general consumer. It's almost considered insane to purchase a $100+ set of high fidelity earphones, despite the massive difference in quality when compared to the likes of the common iPod offerings. Musical finesse rarely crosses peoples minds at all. You buy a CD or MP3 album, a new iPod, and off you go. No one questions the ability of the music player, let alone the earphones. Nor do consumers consider how the master of their favourite songs may have been sabotaged. When you're accustomed to listening to music from P2P clients, torrents, and YouTube, the artifacting introduced at low bitrates doesn't phase you. It's considered 'normal' for music to crackle and go wacky at high volumes, and having the loudest speaker system with the greatest amount of bass is considered 'audio bliss'.

Fortunately, for people who do care, there's a database which lists the dynamic range quality of many artists. It's called the Dynamic Range Database, and it's very handy if you want to avoid buying low quality media. If you want to test the dynamic range of your own tracks, the appropriate analysis software can be found here.

As it stands, CDs remain the easiest way to obtain lossless music. For people who want the very best, vinyl is still the way to go - according to extreme audiophiles. That being said, you need very high quality kit to hear the difference. This is assuming the master hasn't had a dose of DRC beforehand.

It's a sad state of affairs when it has got to the point where the masters are completely ruined to compete in a silly loudness competition. Perhaps there will come a time when having the prettiest MP3 player is considered a lesser priority than using decent headphones and rich high quality music. At least then people will come to appreciate just how stark the quality difference is between a 'good' and 'bad' track. We live in a world of ever advancing technology, let's utilise it! :)

For those interested, here's a few links to interesting articles relating to DRC use over the years:
What Happened To Dynamic Range? - Bob Speer
Wikipedia - Loudness War
Whatever Happened to Dynamic Range on Compact Discs? - George Graham

Note: I'd like to point out that I'm not a professional sound engineer. This article was written based on my own personal research. I've provided the sources for this article within.

The humble web browser has become an integral part of peoples lives. It gives us access to the biggest pool of information available - the Internet - whilst providing the tools to navigate its unimaginably large scope with ease. It's for this reason that extensions/add-ons, additional software which adds extra functionality to the browser, have become very popular in recent years. People want software customised to facilitate their needs and wants, not what a team of developers think is best.

I've come to rely on many add-ons of late. In the interest of sharing these, I've chosen ten of my favourites for both Chrome and Firefox browsers.

1. Lazarus Form Recovery
Firefox | Chrome
This awesome extension does exactly what it claims - form recovery. Have you ever written a lengthy piece of text within a web form, hit submit, and had the server time-out? Or perhaps the auto-logoff 'feature' caught you off guard? Sometimes you can hit 'back' on your browser and have all your text remain intact. Other times, however, you're greeted with a black canvas, ready for you to re-type your message. Fortunately, Lazarus logs all the forms you fill out, and keeps them in an encrypted database for future reference. If you're concerned about privacy, you can set it to disable logging of secure https pages. It's a brilliant safeguard to have.

2. ChatZilla
Firefox only
ChatZilla is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client based on the Mozilla framework. It's a neat add-on to have if you're still communicating via this 22 year old technology. I know I do, and so should you!

3. ChromoDoro
Chrome only
Chrome's answer to the Pomodoro. "What's a Pomodoro?" I hear you ask. It's an Italian kitchen timer. Now why would you want a kitchen timed in your browser? It's the perfect way to use the Pomodoro Technique whilst working within your browser, of course! For people who want a structured study/work system, this is a really cool way to go about it. The extension adds a timer to the browser that when activated, initiates a countdown from 25 minutes. When the timer's up, you have the opportunity to take a five minute break (also timed). Want to know the specifics? Read about it here.

4. Net Usage Item
Firefox only
Keep finding yourself capped due to heavy Internet usage? This add-on will provide you with a constantly updated percentage of your used quota, including a marker informing you where you should be that month. Go beyond that mark, and you're setting yourself up for being capped. It's a handy tool for managing your Internet usage in Firefox.

5. SmoothScroll
Chrome only
For some unknown reason, Chrome doesn't natively support smooth scrolling. Fortunately this has been solved with the arrival of SmoothScroll, a customisable smooth scrolling extension. The default settings are a little odd, but after some tweaking, the result is silky smooth scrolling. For reference, these are the settings I'm using:

Frames per second: 60
Animation time in milliseconds: 200
Stride size per scroll in pixel: 50
Pulse Scale: 2
Pulse Normalize: 1

6. Firebug
Firefox only
Unlike Chrome, Firefox doesn't support element inspection natively. Firebug allows Firefox users to inspect the elements of a given web page. This includes viewing and editing markup on a live page to quickly determine how changes will affect particular elements. It's a handy debugging tool for web developers.

7. UndoIt! (Firefox equivalent, Undo Closed Tabs Button)
Firefox | Chrome
UndoIt! is a simple concept. A one click solution to restoring the last tab closed. Accidently close a tab you needed? Just hit undo and you're set!

8. Flashblock
Firefox | Chrome
Flash can be a pain sometimes. It can be used for annoying purposes (automatically loading videos), malware (via Flash exploits) and uses up valuable CPU cycles in machines such as netbooks. Flashblock solves this by replacing flash content with an icon inside a blank box. If you want to see the Flash content, you click on the box to activate it. If you trust a site, you can add it to the whitelist so that Flash can run on that particular domain at any time.

9. Turn Off the Lights
Chrome only
Turn Off the Lights darkens the screen exposing Flash elements. This is handy when watching videos online, similar to the YouTube feature 'lights off'.

10. DownloadThemAll!
Firefox only
The download manager in Firefox is dismal. It's unreliable, often slow, and is limited in the amount of features it offers. DownloadThemAll! solves this problem by integrating a full-fledged download manager right into the browser itself. Batch, segmented and closely controlled downloading is no longer an issue with this brilliant add-on installed.

Now that I've shared my picks, I want to hear yours! Let me know what you use in the comments section below! :)

So, the long hyped Apple tablet has finally been announced. As expected, it very much resembles a larger iPod Touch. A single hardware button, minimal ports, and a screen which consumes most of the device's top surface. It's touted as a new platform, somewhere between the smartphone and the netbook, which is interesting. Of course, it's not exactly a new platform; Apple is essentially entering an existing one with their own offering. Android based tablets have been around for a while, and haven't really taken off. Regardless, there's been much excitement over this particular device for a couple of reasons. It was a long rumoured product, and it's from Apple. But will the hype pay off? Is the device compelling enough to warrant purchase? Let's find out.

Hype is a double edged sword. It can cause massive excitement for a product, but it can also cause over-expectation. The iPad copped both sides. People expected this thing to be the pinnacle of tablet innovation, with dual cameras, an OLED screen, stereo speakers/microphones, MacOSX, resistive and capacitive touch, the list goes on and on. When long time followers (read: enthusiasts) saw a mere extended iPod Touch, they weren't happy. On the other hand, this same hype generated enough momentum to get it aired on news services internationally. Good news, you ask? Yes and no. News reporters tend to be technically illiterate, and advertised the device as a 'large iPhone'. Who wants a large iPhone? It still impressed many people though, which is all that matters to Apple. The hype may have paid off after all.

The funny thing about hype, however, is that it's short lived. The iPad won't be released for a couple of months, probably more in Australia. Will the average consumer remember it by then? The iPhone made its success by a) being an innovation of an existing established market, and b) being portable enough that you could take it out, and people would say "hey, that's awesome, what is that?" The iPad doesn't really fit into any of these. It's too large to take with you, unless you're carrying some sort of bag as well, so you'd leave it at home in most cases. That can't be good for word of mouth, especially when the device is yet to prove itself. Should Apple have waited until the release date to announce it? I believe they should have.

Regardless of popularity, there's also a concern about the type of functionality this device offers. Now, let's think about what the average consume would want to use this device for:

e-book reader
The iPad has a nice large screen and a snazzy UI, which is a plus. However, the backlit panel is not suitable for reading large amounts of text. As much as people like to believe that this claim is a load of crud, reading off such a panel will give you eye strain, especially in low light. This is why devices such as the Kindle use e-Ink. Not because they like black and white images, but because it doesn't rely on additional lighting. I know I personally have to print off large documents to read them - LCD just doesn't cut it. Perhaps the self-illuminated OLED technology would have been a safer bet.

Web browser
Decent resolution screen, good UI and browser. But no Flash. That really kills it for me. Sure, you can blame Adobe for that until the cows come home, but in the end, no matter who's fault it is, it's still missing. And that sucks. There's also this Micro SIM business, which is annoying if you want to use an existing 3G SIM.

Music
The inbuilt speaker is mono. Sure that's adequate for an inbuilt sound solution, but it would have been nice to have stereo. That being said, with decent headphones, the audio aspect should be great.

Note taking
We know that this device uses a capacitate touch screen, I think that's quite obvious. But does it also have a resistive layer? I don't believe it has, which is a real downer for people who'd want to use this for uni. You can type notes, but you can't type equations and diagrams - you'd want to use a stylus. I realise there's styluses out there for capacitive screens, but the nature of the technology means the input wouldn't be as accurate, and by extension reliable, as a traditional resistive touch screen set-up.
For typing purposes, I can't see people using this for more than IM and quick blog posts. Virtual keys are very good for finger strain. Also, the iPad doesn't offer haptic feedback.

Picture viewer/frame
I think it's safe to say most people have a point and shoot camera of some kind. It'd also be reasonable to expect that said cameras use an SD card. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to include an SD card reader so that we could see our photos on a larger screen, without the hassle of hooking this thing up to iTunes on a PC/Mac? In fact, not just for photos. An SD card would be a great way to get any media on there quickly and easily.

Conferencing
The iPad would have made an awesome little Skype companion for the home. Unfortunately, the lack of a camera makes video conferencing a non-reality. Many people, including myself, thought that this would be an obvious inclusion. I guess not.

Watching movies
Apple touted the iPad's ability to watch HD movies. That's awesome and all, but the screen isn't designed to play widescreen video. I'm sure if you watched the announcement, you'd have noticed that the letterbox format rendered over 40% of the screen real-estate useless. It was literally a thin strip of your movie in the centre of the screen. Not impressive. However, I do understand that having a wide screen aspect ratio would have caused problems for the form factor. But, in the end, it's still an issue.

Multitasking
I think this one is self explanatory. People like doing many things at once. If the Nexus One smartphone can handle several applications simultaneously, I don't see why this, or the iPhone for that matter, can't do the same.

This all being said, I do see a future for this device. Maybe not this generation, or perhaps even the next, but it's definitely got a chance to do well. I just have this sneaking suspicion that Steve Jobs is omitting features on purpose, to keep costs down, and to leave an upgrade path for later revisions. People want this thing to work how they want it to now, not after buying five of them.

So, what does this thing do right for you? What will you use it for? Is it really worth the money for such a device? Leave your comments below. :)

Another quarter, another list of parts. I've created five builds ranging from $1000 to $3000, each with high quality components and a strong focus on raw performance. Looking at gaming? No problem. Video editing and graphic design? There's a PC for you.

The online computer store PC Case Gear has been used to produce the price lists. For comparison, prices in brackets were found using an average of the top 5 StaticICE results (minus outliers). Although StaticICE results tend to be marginally cheaper, keep in mind that the cost of delivery from multiple stores may increase the total considerably. Each PC consists of the tower without external peripherals or operating system (OS).

Note: Parts with an asterisk (*) next to them are only required if you plan to overclock the system.

$1000+ Budget Beast

CPU: Intel Core i5 750 - $239 [$219]
RAM: Corsair CMV4GX3M2A1333C9 4GB - $129 [$124]
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 - $159 [$152]
GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD5770 1GB - $189 [$188]
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-218L - $49 [$42]
Case: Lian Li Lancool Dragon Lord PC-K56 - $85 [$85]
Heatsink: Noctua NH-U9B SE2 - $74 [$75] *
PSU: Corsair CX-400 - $59 [$63]
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB - $112 [$104]
Total: $1095 @ PCCG [$1052 @ StaticICE]

$1500+ Budget Workhorse

CPU: Intel Core i5 750 - $239 [$219]
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (2 x 2GB) - $142 [$149]
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 - $159 [$151]
GPU: 2 x PowerColor Radeon HD5770 1GB - $378 [$376]
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-218L - $49 [$42]
Case: SilverStone Raven RV02 - $195 [$195]
Heatsink: Thermalright Venomous X - $89 [$89] *
Fan: Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Fan 2000rpm - $22 [$22] *
PSU: Corsair HX-650 - $159 [$159]
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS - $118 [$116]
Total: $1550 @ PCCG [$1518 @ StaticICE]

$2000+ Performance Powerhouse

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 - $369 [$347]
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL8T-6GBRM (3x2GB) - $221 [$239]
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R - $279 [$279]
GPU: 2 x PowerColor Radeon HD5770 1GB - $378 [$376]
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-218L - $49 [$42]
Case: SilverStone Raven RV02 - $195 [$195]
Heatsink: Thermalright Venomous X - $89 [$89] *
Fan: Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Fan 2000rpm - $22 [$22] *
PSU: Corsair HX-650 - $159 [$159]
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS - $118 [$116]
SSD: Corsair Extreme X32 32GB - $176 [$176]
Total: $2055 @ PCCG [$2040 @ StaticICE]

$2500+ Grand Gaming Rig

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 - $369 [$347]
RAM: Corsair TR3X6G1600C8 6GB - $264 [$227]
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R - $279 [$279]
GPU: 2 x Radeon HD5850 1GB - $858 [$730]
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-218L - $49 [$42]
Case: SilverStone Raven RV02 - $195 [$195]
Heatsink: Thermalright Venomous X - $89 [$89] *
Fan: Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Fan 2000rpm - $22 [$22] *
PSU: Corsair HX-650 - $159 [$159]
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS - $118 [$116]
SSD: Corsair Extreme X32 32GB - $176 [$176]
Total: $2578 @ PCCG [$2382 @ StaticICE]

$3000+ Performance King

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 - $369 [$347]
RAM: Corsair TR3X6G1600C8 6GB - $264 [$227]
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R - $279 [$279]
GPU: 2 x Radeon HD5850 1GB - $858 [$730]
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-218L - $49 [$42]
Case: SilverStone Fortress FT02 - $282 [$282]
Heatsink: Thermalright Venomous X - $89 [$89] *
Fan: Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Fan 2000rpm - $22 [$22] *
PSU: Corsair HX-650 - $159 [$159]
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS - $118 [$116]
SSD: 2 x OCZ Agility 60GB - $578 [$584]
Total: $3067 @ PCCG [$2877 @ StaticICE]

Note: The Ultra Kaze fan should be mounted on the Vernomous X heatsink so it pushes air through the fins. If the build has an SSD, it's best to install your OS, applications and games to it for added performance. Documents and media are best kept on the larger HDD.

Tip: When shopping for components, visit any brick and mortar stores you have in mind first. Ordering some parts online, then realising that the local store is out of stock for the rest of the build, will only cause frustration, wastage of time, and money.

You may have noticed that some builds are between $50-$100 more than the reference budget. This is because of the variance between the PCCG and StaticICE price, in addition to the optional after market heatsink and fan (if overclocking). It's possible to remain on a strict budget if you shop around, or remove components you don't require.

Well there you have it, system builds for Q1 2010! If you have any questions, or want a computer custom designed to your requirements, feel free to ask on the forum!

Ever used YouTube to listen to or discover music? Well now you can do it in a much more intuitive way! YouTube Disco (short for YouTube Discovery) is a new service which consolidates music clips from your favourite artists into a functional playlist-esque UI. In addition to watching artists of your choosing, you're able to select 'mix tapes' to list tracks from artists with similar styles. Expanding from this is the 'Related Artists' tab which displays similar artists bar tracks.

But it's not just music, a biography of the artist is is also provided for your convenience. Once you've created your music playlist, you can hit 'Watch!' to view it all in the traditional style video layout.

If you haven't checked it out, navigate your browser here to bask in audio bliss!

According to George "Geohot" Hoz, the man responsible for jailbreaking the iPhone, the infamous Playstation 3 Hypervisor is no longer an obstacle. His blog entitled On the PlayStation 3 suggests that his attempts at hacking the PS3 were very fruitful.

Hello hypervisor, I'm geohot
I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip.

3 years, 2 months, 11 days...thats a pretty secure system

Took 5 weeks, 3 in Boston, 2 here, very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not so simple software.

Shout out to George Kharrat from iPhoneMod Brasil for giving me this PS3 a year and a half ago to hack. Sorry it took me so long :)

As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG.

It's hard to believe that it's taken over three whole years for someone to crack this pesky security obstacle. What can be believed is that this guy may very well be the first to achieve such a feat. He was able to pioneer the iPhone jailbreaking escapade that many people utilise today, so it appears we're in for a good chance.

This milestone should make it possible for many interesting PS3 projects to start up. This includes homebrew applications, running 'backup' copies of your games, and perhaps some interesting physical modifications. If you have a PS3, this is definitely something you'll want to look out for. :)

It's not often that you search for software on the Internet, and discover that there's nothing that does what you want. With the vast amount of free and open source software up for grabs, it almost feels as if all bases have been covered. Sometimes, however, you find yourself trawling though the dark depths of search engine results, until the page numbers became mere blurs, and hitting the 'next' link becomes an autonomous reflex. Along the way, many promising results prove to be nothing more than shareware sites attempting to entice you with irrelevant software. Others, which show some glimmer of hope, have UIs that you can only imagine being designed by the local primary school kindergarten class during pastel fun time.

Arts and crafts aside, you quickly become aware of the restrictions of the software, to the extent where any valuable output is held ransom by pop-ups requesting that you purchase the 'full' version - and that's before you've even figured out if the thing does what you want!

After years of using search engines to do your bidding, you start to notice clues scattered amongst the search results. These clues are are great for predicting the likelihood of getting what you want. For instance, you know you're not going to get anywhere once you've seen warez4U-ktnxbai.com as one of the top search results. You also know that clicking said links will get you more than you bargained for, usually in the form of advertisement overload, a metric tonne of new virus friends, and a sprinkle of new spyware to keep you occupied.

One particular irritation that drives me absolutely insane is when searching for a particular product model. Perhaps it's a review I want, or a detailed list of specifications. What you get instead is a massive list of online stores with highly generalised specifications, and non-existent user reviews. Then, if you're lucky, the vendors website will be waiting for you on page 5 somewhere. Fortunately this isn't a common occurrence for major vendors. On the other hand, there's the alternate option of using the search facility on the vendor homepage, and remembering how inhumanely useless they tend to be.

But perhaps the most annoying of all is the flood of software directories which like to muddy the otherwise semi-clean waters of your search results. Not all of them, mind you, but the ones that offer nothing but crapware. Not just any crapware either, it's usually a list of crapware. Once you've scrolled through the massive page in search of something related to your original search query, you get to the keyword finale - a massive bunch of out-of-place words with high emphasis on 'free' and 'download' - and you know you've been duped.

It would be rather nice if the major search engines allowed you to implement custom search filters, in order to remove domains that are known to contain rubbish. And if such a service does exist, either natively or via a third party, I'd love to hear about it! :)

I hope to see you there!
- Vito Cassisi